Free Firewood

Darren — Tue, 22 May 2012 06:27:41 +0000

I love free firewood!

With electricity prices continually increasing, it’s making less and less economic sense to heat your home with electricity. And you can’t beat the warmth and coziness of a slow combustion fireplace.

Getting firewood can be a problem – a cut and split load of seasoned hardwood costs something like $220/ton. If you have a trailer and are prepared to load it yourself, it seems to go for about half that price.

I’m not sure on the exact prices, though, because I’ve never needed to pay for firewood.

Last year, I met a guy through FreeCycle who had a few trees blow down in strong winds. I helped him cut them up and stack the small branches, and could take away as much of the wood as I liked. It took some time, and I had to split it when I got it home, but I got enough firewood to last us a year or more.

I also collected an old hardwood fence that someone was replacing. It burns very well, and fence pailings are easy to cut down to firebox length with a circular saw (be careful of nails) and split with a machete. Perfect kindling!

We have a lot of gum trees on our property, and they drop a lot of sticks we can use as kindling. Sometimes they also drop larger branches, which get added to the firewood pile.

I know of people who use timber pallets as free firewood. You need to be careful they haven’t been chemically treated, though.

There’s an industrial area near where I work, and one of the businesses has big crates of timber offcuts out the front for people to take away as firewood. Presumably it would go to landfill otherwise.

Where do you get your firewood? I’d love to hear from anyone that’s growing their own!

Illawarra Freecycle

My Favourite Sustainability and Homesteading Podcasts

Darren — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 06:00:23 +0000

Gavin (from GreeningOfGavin.com) recently posted a list of his favourite podcasts, so I thought I’d do the same. It’s not easy finding good podcasts on topics that you enjoy, so personal recommendations are valuable.

Interestingly, there are very few overlaps between mine and Gavin’s lists!

I’m including full URLs here, in case you want to print out the list to share with others.

ABC Bush Telegraph

An entertaining look at rural and regional issues around Australia. I particularly like the Food on Friday segment, the Farm Diary, and the updates on issues affecting food production in Australia. I really like how this podcast is broken up into separate stories, so you don’t have to listen to a whole bunch of guff to get to the good stuff.

The Food Chain – What’s Eating What Radio

Discusses food issues. It’s US-centric, but many of the topics will be of interest to people in other countries as well. I just skip the episodes on US politics etc that don’t interest me.

The Greening Of Gavin

Yes Gav, of course I’m a listener! This is a great Australian podcast, featuring interviews with other green bloggers (including me!), as well as Gavin’s thoughts and observations on living sustainably and curbing consumerism.

The Harvest Eating Podcast

A US podcast on seasonal local cooking. The podcaster is Chef Keith Snow, and he shares a lot of information about cooking tips and techniques, as well as updates about what’s going on with his own farm. To be honest I skip a lot of episodes on topics I’m not interested in, but there’s a lot of good stuff too.

Homestead Dividends

web: http://hdivs.com
feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/hdivs

Another US podcast, this one’s all about turning your house into a productive asset. Dan Vamos covers topics like growing/cooking/preserving food, preparedness, practical home improvements, etc.

Homesteading and Permaculture by Paul Wheaton

This is a hard-core permaculture podcast, full of the sort of information that takes you beyond the books and the mass-market permaculture information and into the nuts and bolts of it all. I highly recommend it to anyone who has done a PDC and wants to continue their learning. Paul can be blunt and opinionated at times, but he’ll definitely challenge your assumptions and make you think!

KunstlerCast

web: http://kunstlercast.com
feed: http://kunstlercast.libsyn.com/rss

I’ve only just started listening to this one, on Gavin’s recommendation, but I’ve heard several interviews with Kunstler and find him very though-provoking.

The Onion Radio News

web: http://www.theonion.com
feed: http://www.theonion.com/feeds/radionews/

It can’t all be about gardening and sustainability! This one is great for a laugh. I like to intersperse the short Onion and 60-Second Science podcast episodes between the longer podcasts when I queue them up in my iPod for listening.

Scientific American’s 60-Second Science

Short, sharp news and commentary from the science world.

The Self-Sufficient Gardener

web: http://theselfsufficientgardener.com
feed:

Another US podcast, host Jason Akers picks a topic each week and discusses it in detail. I like how he sticks to the topic and doesn’t ramble about too much other stuff, and each episode is as long as it needs to be to cover the topic. The motto of his show is “efficient, responsible and sustainable”.

The Survival Podcast

Some people might find this one a bit out there, but I really enjoy it. There’s a bit of US politics and a lot of gun stuff, but I usually skip those episodes. There’s also a lot of great stuff about preparedness, homesteading, permaculture, herbal medicine, personal finances, alternative energy, tools, etc. Well worth a listen, and it gets you thinking beyond the normal permaculture and sustainability topics.

This American Life

Each week, they put out a collection of stories on a particular theme or topic. It’s some of the best storytelling on the web, and it’s a nice break from the doom-and-gloom news.

Transition Towns

A New Zealand radio show on Transition Towns initiatives and sustainability issues, hosted by Dr Joanna Santa Barbara.

Do you listen to any of these? I hope this list helps people discover some new podcasts.

Please add your podcast recommendations below! And if you’re a blogger, please consider writing a similar post listing the podcasts you listen to (green or otherwise). Send me an email or leave a comment below and I’ll link up to it.

Green-Change.com » Headline